A Michigan vacation

My wife and I spent the past 10 days in the Lansing, Mich., area. The main reason for being there was to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of our daughter, Sherry, and her husband, Joe. We certainly are proud of them in a time when it seems that the majority of the young folks today don’t have marriages that last very long. We hope that our example of being married over 51 years has set a good example for our children. Our son, Mark, and his wife, have been married 23 years.

We got to Lansing and expected it to be cold and maybe a little nasty. However, we landed there to bright sunshine and a fabulous blue sky. We had packed all the wrong clothes! We needed short-sleeved shirts and cut-off pants and we didn’t pack any such clothes. The weather could not have been more fantastic and we kept saying every day, “This is unbelievable! This can’t be Michigan!”

We slept with the windows open, which we can seldom do in Albany, with a cool breeze circulating through the bedrooms and throughout the house. I had forgotten how wonderful that really was since my wife and I are originally from the Chicago area and we always had the windows open in the summertime. I took my sleep apnea equipment with me on this trip, but I slept like a baby every night and surely didn’t need it. Michigan, where we lived for 19 years, couldn’t have been more beautiful with the mild weather and the trees starting to change color. Soon, all the trees will have changed to the beautiful colors that you think of in the fall in New England.

While in Lansing, we met one of our granddaughters, Danielle, at Uncle John’s Orchard in the area of St. John, Mich. Danielle is a junior at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Mich., and was on her way home to help everyone prepare for the anniversary party and to see us. If you have never been to Michigan, you need to plan a trip there. There is nothing much to see in Detroit at the moment, but it is coming back thanks to the movie industry. But the rest of the state has much to behold.

The Upper Peninsula is extremely beautiful in the fall and the area is like walking back in time. Life moves at a much slower pace there and is a very relaxing place to go visit. Just north of Lansing, in St. John, is one of many orchards in Michigan (www.ujcidermill.com). This one is special with all kinds of rides for children, shops full of trinkets to purchase, rides through the pumpkin patch and all kinds of other things to interest your small children, if you have any. While we were there, a large helicopter landed with a bunch of people stopping there for lunch. The potato soup, homemade bread, apple cider, and donuts completed the great time that we had there.

Plan a trip here and you will be pleasantly surprised! As one of my Southern friends told us, “We met the nicest people when we were there.” You will, too.

About the author

Tom Knighton is the publisher of The Albany Journal. In November, 2011, he became the first blogger to take over a newspaper anywhere in the world. In August of 2012, he made the difficult decision to take the Journal out of print circulation and become an online news agency, a first for the Albany area.